U.S. Marine Murders a Puppy

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Rep Ackerman: Pentagon More Afraid of Gay People Than Terrorists

Rep. Gary Ackerman took on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice yesterday during her testimony while discussing the State Department’s 2008 budget.

During the discussion, Rice claimed the State Department "repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting qualified language experts to work in the agency.” Ackerman in response brought up the 322+ language specialists with "'some skills in an important foreign language such as Arabic, Farsi and Korean' had been discharged from the military since the ban’s inception in 1993."

Ackerman then said the Pentagon “'seems more afraid of gay people than they are [of] terrorists,' and that if the terrorists were smart, 'they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.'”

Ackerman is one of the first Congressmen to call the Administration and the Pentagon out on this appalling decision-making, and did so with great wit. We need more Congressmen like Ackerman! (H/T to ThinkProgress - who also has the video of the exchance)

Leaked video details friendly fire kill

A leaked cockpit video published Tuesday captures a dramatic exchange between two American pilots whose voices choke up when they learn they have killed a British soldier in Iraq. "I'm going to be sick," one pilot says, later adding "we're in jail, dude."

Part 1


Part 2

Another Bush Lie: Troop Surge To Include Almost Double the 21,500 Promised

When President Bush stood before the American people last month, and promised "A New Way Forward" (Tm) in Iraq, he explained to us that this plan would include 17,500 new troops in the Baghdad area (as well as another 4,000 troops in Anbar province).

Well, once again the President "decided" that he wasn't going to share the entire truth with the American people.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the escalation of troops will not just include 21,500 of our men and women, but closer to 48,000.

Thus far, the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified only combat units for deployment. However, U.S. military operations also require substantial support forces, including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services. Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.

DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

It seems the DoD is still determining whether it will send the usual amount of support troops along with the surge, but either way this new plan will either require close to 48,000 troops, or our soldiers in harms way won't have the proper support - once again.

In the same report, the CBO estimates the cost of the troop surge "would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment, depending upon the total number of troops deployed and including additional costs that would be incurred during the build-up and ramp-down periods."

So, the President has once again mislead the American public and is planning to send a larger number of troops into battle without the support of the American people or the Congress, at a price tag of about $20 million.

(H/T to Dee, via Myspace)

Iraqi Generals Turn on U.S. Troops?

So much for the Iraqi's greeting us with flowers and candies. According to Faux Noise, two senior Iraqi generals are being questioned in connection with last week's attack in Karbala that left five U.S. soldiers dead. Four of the five U.S. soldiers killed in the attack were found later miles away from the compound and were reportedly killed execution style.

"The military said two of the soldiers were handcuffed together in the back seat of an SUV near the southern Iraqi town of Mahawil. A third dead soldier was on the ground nearby and a fourth died en route to the hospital."

TPT at the United for Peace and Justice March

As I noted earlier in the week, I attended the United for Peace and Justice anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC this weekend. I arrived early to grab my press pass, and at 10 am the crowd was thin, and the mall empty. By 11 am, when the rally was set to begin, the crowd had grown, and kept growing until the march kicked off at 1:30.











The stage was already set up, and showed Americans something they haven’t had too much of a chance to see, thanks to the Bush Administration.



By searching the crowd, you could see that much of the United States was represented on the Mall Saturday.










The list of speakers was vast, and included politicians, protestors, and celebrities alike.

















The most interesting and motivating portion of the rally came when these two speakers shared their views.

For the first time since the war begun, active duty members of the US military joined in protests of the war. Liam Madden, an active duty member of the Navy, joined protestors Saturday:

“I served for 1 year in Iraq. Now I’m home. I’m still serving my country, I’m still serving my brothers and sisters by trying to get them home alive…

Men and women are coming home and they’re pissed off. I listened to the State of the Union Address. In the 50 minutes of rambling, George Bush not once mentioned the word veteran. Not once…

I thought I was going because our country needed defense, and because there was an injustice that needed to be stopped. Instead I was sent to war with no proper planning, no proper training, no proper equipment, and their premise proved fraudulent.

We need to address our elected government, and force them to represent us as a country, and bring the troops home legitimately.”



Raed Jarrar, a half Sunni/half Shia also joined the protest to provide the voice of the Iraqi people:

“The only hope to end the Iraqi violence is to end the occupation now!

I am here today as a half Sunni, half Shiite Iraqi delivering a untied message from the Iraqis, Sunnis and Shia… From all Iraqis: We want our country back! We want the occupation to end now!"



While the overall point of the march and rally was to share with Congress American’s displeasure with the war, each individual at the protest decided to show their opinion in different and expressive ways:

Reminder: George W. Bush is no Lincoln!